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Soaring food-thefts due to high prices, warns consumer council

Also some good news: security guard rescues 50 people from burning building.

September 9 2009 -- Daniëlla du Plooy of Beeld newspaper reports that ‘the economic pains’ are leading countless desperate people to steal. The vast majority steal basic foodstuffs, says Consumer Council director Michael Broughton, while a minority also steal small ‘luxury items’ such as food-sweeteners.

Broughton said last year, some R4,2-million ‘s worth of consumer-goods were stolen in shops. Thus far up to June 2009, this has already soared past R3-million, with the Christmas season, when stealing increases dramatically, still ahead.

“People steal items such as rice, sugar, maize-meal and tiny bits of chicken,’ he said. Most of these people are caught after they’ve done their purchases, and then return with the shopping bags to ‘add to their food baskets’. “It’s usually items which they used to always buy in the past, but now no longer can afford,’ he said.

What is particularly worrying however is the fact that it’s not only those millions of South Africans who live below the ‘breadline’ of $1 a day. “People from higher income groups now are also counted among the new thieves being caught,’ he noted.

“A woman for instance will steal a little container of sweeteners, because her husband had lost his job and they can’t afford it any longer. People don’t want to do without such goods,’ he said.

Anyone who hides stolen items inside their clothing or underneath other goods, can be stopped inside, and even arrested, he said. “In the past, shop-assistants had to wait until such a person had left the shop with the stolen item, but now it’s accepted that one doesn’t just hide something without the intention of actually stealing it.’ He says it’s a tragedy that ‘the recession is forcing people into theft.

Security guard rescues 50 from burning building in Vereeniging

Afrikaner security guard Danie Nortjé (54) of Broadway Security company, rescued at least 50 students and office workers from a burning downtown building at 8am yesterday-morning.

After alerting the fire department when someone alerted him to a first-floor fire, Nortjé first tried to douse it with a small fire-extinguisher. The fire generated thick smoke and high flames from the start, bystanders said. He then started helping terrified workers down from the smoke filled upper floors to safety, breaking down two security doors to let students and workers escape from the college on the second floor. Local businessman Andre van Vuuren said that ‘very few people would have risked their lives like this man had done.’

The fire is believed to have started at the premises of a traditional healer ‘s shop on the first floor of the Silver Hawk building in Kruger Avenue, downtown Vereeniging, although the cause is still being investigated, writes Van Buul. The local fire department arrived quickly and started dousing the fire while Nortjé and several firemen broke down a steel security gate and a wooden door which were blocking access to Universal College Outcomes on the second-floor and rescued all the students and personnel there.

“I don’t know how, but the gate went open with just one powerful pull, it’s probably the adrenaline which made me so strong suddenly, the soft-spoken security guard explained afterwards.

One panic-stricken woman jumped from a first-floor balcony to safety, said Gareth Staley of ER24, and taken to Vereeniging MediClinic for treatment of an injured ankle and smoke-inhalation. Six other people also required treatment at various other Vaal-Triangle hospitals.

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October 20 2017

Please note that my site with the PAST SEVEN YEARS' information on atrocities against white South Africas, was hacked away. It used to be on https://www.censorbugbear.org. I apologize that this information is no longer available online. Anyone needing information about specific cases please email me at a.j.stuijt@knid.nl

For a name-list of murdered white farmers, - smallholders and their family and workers in South Africa, up to April 2011, view:

and for reports of human-rights violations against South African minorities, including whites, after 2011 see: http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.nl

The term "genocide" was coined by legal scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943, writing:

'Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actionsaiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and lives of the members of such groups... '